The oldest
Christian document since the New Testament, explicitly avowing the doctrine
of universal restoration, is the "Sibylline Oracles."1
Different portions of this composition were written at different dates,
from 181 B.C. to 267 A.D. The portion expressing universal salvation was
written by an Alexandrine Christian, about A.D. 80, and the "Oracles" were
in general circulation from A.D. 100 onward, and are referred to with great
consideration for many centuries subsequently.

The Righteous Pray for the Wicked

After
describing the destruction of the world, which Sibyl prophesies, and the
consignments of the wicked to aionion torment, such as our Lord
teaches in Matt. 25:46, the blessed inhabitants of heaven are represented
as being made wretched by the thought of the sufferings of the lost, and
as beseeching God with united voice to release them. God consents to their
request, and delivers them from their torment and bestows happiness upon
them. The "Oracles" declare: "The omnipotent, incorruptible God shall confer
another favor on his worshipers, when they shall ask him. He shall save
mankind from the pernicious fire and immortal (athanaton) agonies.
Having gathered them and safely secured them from the unwearied flame,
he shall send them, for his people's sake, into another and æonian
life with the immortals on the Elysian plain, where flow perpetually the
long dark waves of the deep sea of Acheron." 2

The punishments
of the wicked are here described in the strongest possible terms; they
are "eternal," (aionion), "immortal" (athanaton), and yet
it is declared that at the request of the righteous, God will deliver them
from those torments.

The Sibyl anticipates
the poet Whittier:

"Still thy love, O Christ
arisen,Yearns to reach those souls
in prison;Through all depths of sin
and lossDrops the plummet of thy
cross;Never yet abyss was foundDeeper than that cross could
sound;Deep below as high aboveSweeps the circle of God's
love."

Holmes expresses
the same sentiment:

"What if (a) spirit redeemed,
amid the hostOf chanting angels, in some
transient lullOf the eternal anthem heard
the cryOf its lost darling.Would it not long to leave
the bliss of heavenBearing a little water in
its hand,To moisten those poor lips
that plead in vainWith him we call Our Father?"

This famous document
was quoted by Athenagoras, Theophilus, Justin Martyr, Lactantius, Clement
of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, and Augustine. Clement calls the author
"the prophetess."

As late as the Middle Ages
the "Oracles" was well known, and its author was ranked with David. When
Thomas of Celano composed the great Hymn of the Judgment, he said:

"the dreadful day of wrath shall
dissolve the world into ashes, as David and the Sibyl testify."

The best scholars
concede the Universalism of the "Oracles." Says Musardus,3
the "Oracles" teach "that the damned shall be liberated after they shall
have endured infernal punishments for many ages, which was an error
of Origen." And Opsopoeus adds 4
"that the 'Oracles' teach that the wicked suffering in hell (Gehenna) after
a certain period, and through atonements of griefs, would be released from
punishments, which was the opinion of Origen," etc. Hades, and all things
and persons are cast into unquenchable fire for purification; that is,
the fire is unquenchable until it has accomplished its purpose of purification.
Gehenna itself, as Origen afterwards insisted, purifies and surrenders
its prisoners. The wicked are to suffer "immortal" agonies and then be
saved.

The Oracles are Early Christian Classics

Dr.
Westcott remarks of the "Oracles:" "They stand alone as an attempt to embrace
all history, even it its details, in one great, theocratic view, and to
regard the kingdoms of the world as destined to from provinces in a future
Kingdom of God."

While the views
of retribution are not elevated, and represent the punishment of the wicked
as in literal fire, and not a moral discipline, such as Origen taught,
they clearly teach universal salvation beyond all æonian, even athanaton
suffering. A noted writer 5 declares: "The
doctrine of Universalism is brought forward in more than one passage of
this piece;" though elsewhere Dr. Deane misstates, inconsistently enough,
the language of the Sibyl, thus: "God, hearkening to the prayers of the
saints, shall save some from the pains of hell." He mistranslates anthropois
into "some" instead of "mankind," the meaning of the word, in order to
show that Sibyl "does not, like Origen, believe in universal salvation."
And yet he is forced at add: "This notion of the salvation of any is opposed
to the sentiment elsewhere expressed where in picturing the torments of
hell the writer asserts that there is no place for repentance or any mercy
or hope." But Dr. Deane forgets that the acknowledged Universalists of
the early church employed equally strong terms concerning the duration
of punishment. The use of the terms signifying endless torment employed
by the Sibyl, as by Origen and others, did not preclude the idea of the
ultimate salvation of those thus punished. Origen taught that the most
stubborn sins will be "extinguished" by the "eternal fire," just as Sibyl
says the wicked perish in "immortal" fire and are subsequently saved.

Sir John Floyer's Blunder

In
line with Deane's strange contradictions may be mentioned another of the
many curiosities of criticism. An English prose version of the Sibyl's
Homeric hexameters was made in 1713 by Sir John Floyer.6
He denies that the "Oracles" teach universal salvation at all, but it order
to sustain his position he omits to translate one word, and mistranslates
another! He renders the entire passage thus: "The Almighty and incorruptible
God shall grant this also to the righteous when they shall pray to him;
that he will preserve them (literally save mankind, anthropois sosai)
from the pernicious fire and everlasting gnashing of teeth; and this will
he do when he gathers the faithful from the eternal fire, placing them
in another region, he shall send them by his own angels into another life,
which will be eternal to them that are immortal, in the Elysian fields,"
etc.

It is only by
rendering the words denoting "save mankind," "deliver them," that he makes
his point. A correct rendering coincides with the declarations of most
scholars, that universal salvation is taught in this unique document.

The Sibyl declares
that the just and the unjust pass through "unquenchable fire," and that
all things, even Hades, are to be purified by the divine fire. And after
the unjust have been released from Hades, they are committed to Gehenna,
and then at the desire of the righteous, they are to be removed thence
to "a life eternal for immortals."(B. II, vv: 211-250-340).

Augustine (De
Civ. Dei. B., XVIII) cited the famous acronym on the Savior's
name as a proof that the Sibyl foretold the coming of Jesus. And
it is curious to note that in his "City of God," when stating that certain
"merciful doctors" denied the eternity of punishment, he gives the same
reasons they assign for their belief that the Sibyl names. He quotes the
"merciful doctors" as saying that Christians in this world possess the
disposition to forgive their enemies, they will not lay aside those traits
at death, but will pity, forgive, and pray for the wicked. The redeemed
will unite in this prayer and will not God feel pity, and answer the prayer
in which all the saved unite? Augustine presents these unanswerable objections,
and devotes many pages to a very feeble reply to them.

So fully did
the Christians of the First Century recognize the "Oracles," and appeal
to them, that they were frequently styled the Sibylists. Celsus applied
the word to them, and Origen, though he accepted the Sibyl's teachings
concerning destiny, objected that the term was not justly applied. This
he does in "Ag. Cels." V. 61. Clement of Alexandria not only calls the
Sibyl a prophetess, but her "Oracles" a saving hymn.

Lactantius cited
fifty passages from the Sibyl in his evidences of Christianity.

No book, not
even the New Testament, exerted a wider influence on the first centuries
of the church, than the "Sibylline Oracles."

Quite a literature
of the subject exists in the periodical publications of the past few years,
but there are very few references to the Universalism of the "Oracles."
The "Edinburgh Review" (July, 1867) is an exception. It states that the
"Oracles" declare "the Origenist belief of a universal restoration (V.
33) of all men, even to the unjust, and the devils themselves." The "Oracles"
are specially valuable in showing the opinions of the first Christians
after the apostles, and, as they aim to convert Pagans to Christ, and employ
this doctrine as one of the weapons, it must at that time have been considered
a prominent Christian tenet, and the candid student is forced to conclude
that they give expression to the prevalent opinion of those days on the
subject of human destiny.

The reader must
not fail to observe that the "Sibylline Oracles" explicitly state the deliverance
of the damned from the torments of hell. They repeatedly call the suffering
everlasting, even "immortal," yet declare that it shell end in the restoration
of the lost.